Resources for assessing the home language competences of migrant pupils

The Recolang project has been organised as a remote team operation since March 2020. From March to July, the team prepared a first version of the two survey components (see the minutes of the meetings held last March). The survey was then disseminated in a "pre-test" format. Around thirty returns were received (on both parts) from contributors from Austria, Croatia, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Portugal and Switzerland.

The survey in its "pre-test" version was available for the "institutions" section in English, French and Hungarian, and for the "users" section in Arabic, English, French, Hungarian and Farsi.

The meeting on 6 and 7 October enabled the Recolang project team to prepare the final versions of the survey collectively, on the basis of the feedback received at the end of the test phase. The launch of the survey is scheduled for December 2020. The finalised survey will be available in different languages in the "institution" section (German, English, French, Hungarian, Portuguese) and in the "family" section (German, English, Arabic, French, Parsi, Portuguese, Turkish).

Together, the team is working on the preparation of the first elements for the presentation of assessment systems for family language skills known to the team (Hamburg, Le Mans, in particular). These presentation elements will be posted on the website.

The results of the survey and the elements of known systems will be discussed at the network meeting scheduled for June 2021 in Graz - if the health situation allows: what are the needs of users / which practices and systems have been collected / what are the recommendations for educational policies? This important stage will prepare the collaborative workshop with the various representatives of the member countries taking part in the project (November 21), whose discussions will focus on recommendations for criteria to be taken into account when setting up this type of evaluation adapted to the groups concerned.

Authors: Isabelle Audras, Carole-Anne Deschoux, Françoise Leclaire, Ildikó Lőrincz, Filomena Martins, Ana-Sofia Unkart

• RECOLANG website “Resources for assessing the home language competences of migrant pupils” of the ECML (English - French): www.ecml.at/recolang
• ECML programme of activities 2020-2023 "Inspiring innovation in language education: changing contexts, evolving competences": English - French

The ECML project "Resources for assessing the home language competences of migrant pupils", RECOLANG for short, is the first ever ECML project to be funded through the Ordinary Budget of the Council of Europe and therefore open to all 50 countries signatory to the European Cultural Convention. Its purpose is to raise awareness across Europe of the importance of taking the plurilingual repertoires of all pupils in to account when developing education policies to ensure that together we create more equitable European education systems.

In order to do this, the following steps need to be taken: the collection and analysis of existing practices, programmes and materials for assessing skills in family languages, the formulation of criteria and the production of materials for tailored formative assessment. This assessment will consider the multilingual pathways and repertoires of the learners, thus promoting synergies between language learning and the development of competences in the language(s) of schooling.

The project will begin by undertaking bibliographical research and initiating a survey linked to these issues. The survey will be carried out at European level and will be divided into two parts (one for families and users of assessments and another for teaching and supervisory teams in schools, reception and vocational training centres for young people aged 11-18, including unaccompanied minors). The following data will be collected: the languages of the pupils and their varieties (written / oral), learning conditions (formal or informal; home languages, first, language (s) of schooling, languages learned during the migration path, etc.), as well as the practices / programmes of skills' assessment in these existing languages, possible links to curricula, as well as testimonials from users and other educational stakeholders.

The project team, which brings together 6 experts from 5 European countries, met for the first time on 12-13 March 2020 to launch the new project and start preparing the survey.

Author(s) : I. Audras, C.-A. Deschoux, F. Leclaire, I. Lorincz, F. Martins, A.-S. Unkart

• RECOLANG website (English - French): www.ecml.at/recolang
• ECML programme of activities 2020-2023 "Inspiring innovation in language education: changing contexts, evolving competences": English - French